August 6th, 2009

I’ve run into this problem twice in the last couple of days while downloading and installing new versions of Eclipse and trying out different packages for PHP editing (PDT and Aptana Studio). First time I googled around I couldn’t find a solution and so had to figure it out myself. Second time I thought that maybe I should make a note of my solution as other people might run into it as well.

This happens when trying to install a new plugin through the “Check for updates” or “Install New Software” dialog. The problem is because of the hidden ._* files which are created by OS X inside the Eclipse directory. The solution is pretty easy – open up a terminal and:

cd/path/to/your/eclipse/folderfind . -iname'._*'-execrm-rf{} \;

WARNING – running commands like this on your computer can cause problems. I have run exactly the command above on my machine with no problem but if you manage to break your computer following the above instructions then I take no responsibility! That said, as long as you correctly cd into the Eclipse directory and type/ copy the command correctly then nothing should go wrong!